Can you renouce power?

[Vimalakirti]

At every moment, you’re with power, or against it. Or you’re with power, and against it, at every moment.
Or you’re with power on some days, and against it on others.
Or you’re with power day after day, but wish you weren’t.
Or day after day you’re against power, but wish you had some.
Or power lights & dims up and down the chakras of your spine like a string of Christmas lights.
You sprinkle power like a spice, or snort it like a drug.
You wallow in power like a pig in s**t, or you pinch it off like a turd-tabulating puritan.
You wonder: is there anything but power? You wonder: is power anything?
You speak against power, using a rhetoric of power.
Or your power is so different, so rarified & pure in quality that really it’s not power at all. Your power has the winsome, bulbous head of a newborn, while the power of others is like the power of biker gangs, politburos, brown shirts & war lords – it just reeks. Your power smells like lilacs. In all honesty, your power is adorable, while the power of others is like the farts of others – noxious.
And without your exercise of power, which is good, wholesome, sanctioned, why would you wake in the morning, scratch your balls, and start the day, with nothing to wield and nowhere to wield it? Say you woke in a picture-book world of virtue, where every fly, dog, whale, robin, dragon, bridge, prairie & kitchen is perfectly secure & whole in the expression of its own peculiar being. What would you have to do? Wouldn’t you fall into inertia, lassitude, boredom, decline & extinction? Your sword would dangle at your side like joke store prop. What would you have to do? You can’t imagine. You have to see.
Yet at every moment, you must be with power or against it, however subtly you speak or hedge the question, how diffidently you walk.
You must be with power, no matter how ragged & violent its methods; against power, no matter how benign & placid its face.
Power doesn’t mind. It coils & uncoils as if it were a natural thing. Rivers of biography and solemn documentaries spout from its jaws. Far from its fields of action, it monologues you to sleep with catalogues, genealogies & recitations. You nod off to dreamy voice-overs, in pleasant slumber, knowing that all is well, wondering why anyone would be so out of season as to object.
Still, something mild & terrible wants to know – in the room with you, on the road with you, in your head. It’s a hopeless question, a stupid question, you say, an infantile question. The question doesn’t mind. The question will keep posing & composing itself like a ham actor, like a child at make-believe, like all the saints, idiots & martyrs who ever lived, like rishis balancing by the river on spiral toenails, like Catholic girls passionately in love with their lord, like anyone and no one just awakening from a sleep.

[Bandit]

there is no power except for what God allows.

BUT-I have special powers like Shazam & Superman that I cannot renounce after I go into the phone booth.

[Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine]

Originally Posted by Bandit

there is no power except for what God allows.

BUT-I have special powers like Shazam & Superman that I cannot renounce after I go into the phone booth.

Ban-dit *shakes head* Where did your parents and I go wrong? *roflmaopmpculpsi*

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

Ban-dit *shakes head* Where did your parents and I go wrong? *roflmaopmpculpsi*

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

LOL Phyllis, just thinking of all the super powers we thought we had, when we were kids.

[brucegdc]

Yea, back in the days when there were still phonebooths. Can you imagine Clark Kent trying to change to Superman in these small boxes on poles that pass for phone booths now? <grin>

[JonMarc]

Originally Posted by brucegdc

Yea, back in the days when there were still phonebooths. Can you imagine Clark Kent trying to change to Superman in these small boxes on poles that pass for phone booths now? <grin>

perhaps that is why they did away with the old phone booths. figured if they narrowed the field a bit they could sit on the remaining ones and catch him as he transformed to go save the day. man, the media rules everything!

[Bandit]

Underdog had to find a phone booth also to change into his powers.

They would all be in big trouble today



http://www.toontracker.com/totaltv/underdog.htm

Then WonderWoman would spin around in circles while Batman & Robin just slid down the batpole. hee hee

[Vimalakirti]

Interesting. I guess the fact that we have only goofy responses so far is either an expression of disdain for the topic or an inability to address the challenge.

[Bandit]

Ok . since the original question is 500 miles long & talks about some powers smelling like farts & lilacs. Maybe go by one & each power at a time or explain in one simple sentence what you mean by renouncing power. (just a suggestion)


A president or King can renounce power. The prinicipal can renounce power. A spoken word at a wedding can renounce power. Political power? Every day wake up & go to work power? Road rage & traffic light power? Freedom of speech & media power? Everyone can renounce power. Having, getting, renouncing power...I dont generally think this way so I may not be a good one for this topic. Sorry.

Seems to me, power(s) come for and against individuals, by others. Is that what you mean?
I am thinking a well balance of humility & pride brings out the best in people.

I gave my answer from the start. There is no power except that which God allows. He will give it & he can take it away & that is what I believe.

[Vimalakirti]

Originally Posted by Bandit

Ok . since the original question is 500 miles long & talks about some powers smelling like farts & lilacs.

You're right. You're probably not a good one for this topic! (Though I think Farts & Lilacs is a new CD by rapper 39 Cents.) But perhaps no one on this forum is. In fact, I may not even belong here. There's no way of knowing the reaction you'll get to something until you throw it out there.

Look, it's not a question as such but basically a verbal piece, fiction, prose poem, take your pick. But it's playing with, riffing with a question. If you can't take it in that frame of mind, then, yes, it's a useless exercise.

You'll notice as well that the piece in fact anticipates your type of reaction, i.e., that the question isn't "serious"; in fact, it plays on a most serious and central point - one that you perhaps would rather not consider - that while power is part of the fabric of the human condition, renunciation or transformation of power is essential to the core practice of all traditions, and I would say it's the core element of all moral advance. The will to power is precisely the state of sin or ignorance or egotism that every tradition preaches against.

So sure, in this crazy world we can't escape the deployments of power. We can't avoid siding with the better bully, or the lesser of two evils. We can't just "give up" power in a simpleminded way. But we also can't escape wrestling with the question.

Only wrestling with the question allows some means of checking power and its abuses, of keeping it reasonably in line. All tidy answers lead to problems. Our concrete situation is always ambiguous.

You may have metaphysical certainty, and I sincerely hope that it leads you as near as possible to a fully compassionate life. But you must also recognize that the enunciation of a principle, or even a whole doctrinal and ecclesiastical system built around it, is hardly a guarantee against the dangers of power and its uses.

I bring this up in a forum like this because it's precisely here where we are so insulated from one another by tidy doctrinal positions, unassailable beliefs and good wishes that we can so easily fool ourselves. Yet how easy is to call out the dogs when one seriously puts any of these positions into question! How difficult a concept is it that doctrinal systems may be pragmatically speaking necessary structures of power, but that agitated or dogmatic defence of doctrine is precisely where the abuse begins?

We need to begin with gentleness and tolerance, but to me the real endgame of comparative religion is not the exchange of good wishes but the serious questioning of all traditions, without the valorization of any one over the others, with the aim of honestly pointing out where each one goes right and where it goes wrong.

The plain sniffin' fact is that for every one of us when we assert a belief, a doctrine, a certainty we're also asserting egotism and power; that this egotism and power is part of the fabric of our most exalted traditions; that the patient & fearless unmasking of our own internal systems of power is one of the deepest forms of spiritual practice we can adopt.

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by Vimalakirti

All tidy answers lead to problems. Our concrete situation is always ambiguous.

I will just do this one. We cannot change everything in the world. Some tidy answers will also fix possible future problems. I guess that depends on where & on what one builds there foundation on.

What I am seeing in part from this is THAT WHICH CAN BE SHAKEN WILL BE SHAKEN.

Anyway , welcome ot CR Vimalakirti. I think you may have a lot on your mind? & it appears to be sincere to me. So just give it time & answers will come. Just when we think we dont belong, we find out where we belong. There are some nice people around here to get to know.

[Quahom1]

I think your concept of power is not the same as others'. The "power" you seem to be describing is a power that is over you (or over someone), instead of you wielding that power.

The power within us, or granted us, is a tool to be used. Why would I want to throw away a tool that could help me, or help others? Yes there are three kinds of power. That which is in each of us, and that which is bestowed upon us, and that which is held over us.

But it is only a tool, to be picked up, dropped and picked up again. We are never without power. We may choose not to use it, but it is always there for us to take up.

That serious enough for you?

v/r

Q

[Vimalakirti]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

I think your concept of power is not the same as others'. The "power" you seem to be describing is a power that is over you (or over someone), instead of you wielding that power.

The power within us, or granted us, is a tool to be used. Why would I want to throw away a tool that could help me, or help others? Yes there are three kinds of power. That which is in each of us, and that which is bestowed upon us, and that which is held over us.

But it is only a tool, to be picked up, dropped and picked up again. We are never without power. We may choose not to use it, but it is always there for us to take up.

That serious enough for you?

v/r

Q

Serious, but superficial. Dig deeper, beneath your rationalisations. It's not a question of composing comforting definitions but of facing an inherent problematic.

[Vimalakirti]

Originally Posted by Bandit

I will just do this one. We cannot change everything in the world. Some tidy answers will also fix possible future problems. I guess that depends on where & on what one builds there foundation on.

What I am seeing in part from this is THAT WHICH CAN BE SHAKEN WILL BE SHAKEN.

Anyway , welcome ot CR Vimalakirti. I think you may have a lot on your mind? & it appears to be sincere to me. So just give it time & answers will come. Just when we think we dont belong, we find out where we belong. There are some nice people around here to get to know.

I trust it wasn't your intention, but you did manage to strike a patronising note. I don't know that I have any more "on my mind" than you do. My intent was to pose a challenging topic for the forum. If you don't want to engage that topic because from your perspective the problematic has no meaning or importance, I understand and respect that. In that case, there's no basis for discussion, and case closed.

But I do have a couple questions for you. Is the God you refer to a being of greater power than man, or a being beyond the idea of power; is he literally the Lord of Hosts or does he render the idea of a Lord of Hosts vulgar and trivial; is he personhood writ large, or is he no respecter of persons?

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Vimalakirti

Serious, but superficial. Dig deeper, beneath your rationalisations. It's not a question of composing comforting definitions but of facing an inherent problematic.

I'm afraid you are in no position to determine what is superficial, and what is serious. I dig deeper in life than you realize, and others here do so as well. Arrogance is a superficial concept as well...

heavy winds are beginning to rise.

v/r

Q